Media Clippings 1999

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Until we explicitly value our free time, voluntary community service, parental time with children, and natural resource wealth, they will never receive adequate attention on the public policy agenda. Similarly, until we assign explicit value to equity in our growth measures, we will continue to give little policy attention to the fact that here in Nova Scotia the poorest 20% of the population has lost 29% of its real income after taxes and transfers since 1990.
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The obsession with growth and its confusion with genuine development and quality of life have led us down a dangerous and self-destructive path. It is doubtful that we will leave our children a better legacy until we cut through the myth that "more" means "better," until we stop gauging our well being and prosperity by how fast the economy is growing, and until we stop misusing the GDP as a measure of progress.
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Genuine Progress Index can tell us more than Gross Domestic Product“
Yet, as environmental preservation generates little or no immediate growth, and the market statistics are centred around the products, there is little pressure for policymakers to oppose the current economic system of values.
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So, just how serious is the problem in Nova Scotia? In 1958, one quarter of the province's trees were 80 years and older, with eight percent of the total tree population over the 100 year mark. In 1998, only two percent of Nova Scotia's trees are older than 80 years, and less than one percent are over a 100. This means a profound loss of forest canopy and species diversity, which increases the likelihood of disease and parasite destruction to the province's forests, and thereby lowers or threatens to lower Nova Scotia's overall timber value.
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“ Media reports on Nova Scotia's fishery usually focus on how much fish is caught, fisher incomes, fish exports, and total revenue. All of these factors contribute to the Gross Domestic Product, the conventional measuring stick of the economy. These measures, however, do not capture all that we value in a fishery. To produce a more comprehensive assessment of the fishery, and to measure its progress towards sustainability, a Fisheries Account is being developed within the framework of the Genuine Progress Index, as introduced in the previous BTI. The discussion here highlights some major themes of the GPI Fisheries Account. ”

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Using the traditional measurement of the economy, a rising crime rates would show as a gain.
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Colman said the GPI instead views these as an indication society is going in the wrong direction. A jump in the sales of alarms, for example, shows a population living in fear.
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June 19, 1999, The Daily News, Halifax ~ Ronald Colman — Second of two parts

Genuine Progress Index can tell us more than Gross Domestic Product“
First, we now know, through hard experience in the ground fishery, that depleting our natural resources in the name of economic growth does not produce more jobs in the long run, but massive unemployment. The national round table on environment and economy recently warned we face a similar prospect in our Maritime forest industry
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Secondly growth is increasingly capital driven rather than labourdriven. We have seen continuous and rapid economic growth since the Second World War and a steady increase in Canadian unemployment rates. In Nova Scotia, we have gone from less than 5 per cent unemployment in the late 1960s to an average of 8 per cent in the 1970s, and 12 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s. "Normal" and even "good" employment rates today were completely unacceptable 30 years ago.
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And yet, we still link "more jobs" with "more growth." "If" we forgive loans to Michelin, "if" we bring in casinos, "if" we cut a new deal with China, "if" we entice another corporation with a tax break or subsidy, it is said, "then" perhaps we can create (or more likely save) jobs.
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June 18,1999, The Daily News, Halifax ~ Ronald Colman — First of two parts

We’ve got it all wrong“
There is no more pervasive and dangerous illusion in our society than the equation of economic growth with well being and prosperity all of us—politicians, economists, journalists, the general public—are hooked on the materialist myth "more is better."
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New measuring tool takes deeper look at economy“
IF ECONOMIC statistics had been kept in 1918 as they are today, Halifax would have looked wonderful. Sales of almost everything were at record highs; construction was booming; everyone was working. The gross domestic product was soaring.
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Were Haligonians happy? Hardly: the city was literally a disaster area, having been levelled by the Halifax Explosion in December 1917. That wouldn't have mattered to the GDP calculation. Because the GDP simply tots up all the activities which can be measured in money, it is equally happy about crime, crumpets and Christmas trees. Crime generates prison construction, expands police forces, improves sales of security equipment. Up goes the GDP.
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“ Nova Scotia's nonprofit groups say they're stressed out, tapped out, and fed up after years of doing more with less. ¶ "Like all nonprofits, we're expected to produce firstrate programming with a second-rate budget," Yvonne Manzer, of the Youth Alternative Society told a roundtable conference on volunteering in Halifax yesterday ¶ Poorly paid staff are working through their breaks and burning out, while nonprofits spend more time fundraising and less time serving the community she added. ¶ "Something's got to give." ”

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Crime and punishment in Nova Scotia. It could be a novel. After the Donald Marshall affair, the Westray affair, and more affairs in the administration of justice than you can shake a stick at, there's been some redemption after all.
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Nova Scotia has a "restorative justice" program—people doing community service and restitution instead of going to jail for minor crimes—that is leading the country. We send fewer people to jail per capita than other provinces and thus spend far less on jails and their trappings.
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We might even call this "genuine progress."
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Crime costs Nova Scotians $1.2 billion a year, says a group that wants to change the way we measure our wealth.
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GPI Atlantic, a nonprofit economic research group based in Halifax, released a study yesterday that concludes the true cost of criminal activity is largely misunderstood.
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The $44,000 a year it takes to keep an inmate in jail for a year, for example, more than pays for a high school teacher's salary.
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The GPI pilot project is directed by economist Ronald Colman. Its approach is "fullcost accounting," which translates social and environmental benefits and costs into monetary terms, and assigns negative value to negative things. The GPI recognises four forms of capital: natural, human, social and "produced" capital. "A depletion of any form of capital," says Dr. Colman, "imperils the future flow of services, and reinvestment in all four forms of capital is necessary for economic health."
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“ In economic terminology, capital generally refers to a stock of materials or information available and flows include the extractions (e.g. harvests) and/or services from that stock. If the amount taken from a stock does not exceed the stock's growth rate, then, in theory, the flow rate perpetuates through time (Prugh 1995). However, forest ecosystems are complex life-sustaining systems that contain many different stocks, not only timber or wood stocks. Therefore, a complex set of criteria and indicators must be used to measure whether our activities leave the original natural capital intact. ”

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Since its creation some 60 years ago (though it's hard to imagine a time before it), the GDP has become the universal benchmark for societal progress. A rising GDP means that the economy is growing; growth defined by a rising GDP is progress; and progress is good.
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Now, however, a rising chorus is wondering what kind of progress the GDP is moving us toward, and whether what it's measuring is progress at all.s
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“A sharp drop in the hours most Nova Scotia have to volunteer is costing at least $60 million annually in lost services to the poor, elderly and sick, a new study has found. The study's author says the hundreds of thousands of Nova Scotians who care daily for society's most vulnerable are hardly to blame.”

“ For more than 23 years, Cynthia Burney has worked up to 30 hours a week performing a multitude of duties, such as serving evening tea, raising funds, working as a gift shop attendant, book keeping and cleaning—all for free. ¶ But according to a report released yesterday, she is part of a dying breed. Nova Scotians are clocking fewer volunteer hours than in the past. ”